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'The Raid 3' May Not Arrive Until 2018 or 2019

You may consider Gareth Huw Evans' The Raid 2: Berandal an instant action classic; alternately, you may feel that Evans' ambition got in the way of the sequel's ante-upping action sequences. (Read our own Kofi Outlaw's review here.) But if you fall on one side of the fence or the other, you're probably still excited at the prospect of Evans returning to Jakarta's bloodstained criminal underworld for another round of hyper-violence.

After all, the Welsh-born filmmaker has already built expectations for The Raid 3's (subtitle pending) eventual release; that film will, per Evans' own words, begin a couple of hours before The Raid 2: Berandal's insanely brutal climax. But though the director already has both a concept and a starting point in mind, he isn't rushing to put pen to paper on a new Raid picture just yet.

In point of fact, if you're eagerly anticipating the next installment in the' Indonesian crime saga, it seems like you're going to have to wait a while - a long, long while. In a recent statement broadcast via Twitter, Evans put The Raid 3 on his timeline somewhere between 2018 and 2019, noting concurrently that he hasn't begun writing the film's script, either. So fans of The Raid: Redemptionand The Raid 2: Berandal are going to have to find their over the top action fixes elsewhere in the interim.

Bummer. Kind of, anyways; even if you found The Raid 2: Berandal's operatic narrative, bursting with hints of The Godfather and Infernal Affairs, to be a bit much, the film's set pieces, which are so inventively crazy that it's a wonder nobody died while filming them, more than make up for it. And yet there's something to be said for not rushing toward production for the sake of churning out product.

So maybe the length of stay separating The Raid 3 from The Raid 2: Berandal will ultimately benefit Evans, his stars (several of whom are lending their skills to J.J. Abrams' Star Wars: The Force Awakens), and the entire series as a whole. It's worth pointing out that Evans' Tweet means that The Raid 3 is still a subject fresh in his mind even as he busies himself with other projects, though what those might be is unknown. (He was, for a while, working on The Night Comes For Us with Indonesian director and VHS 2collaborator Timo Tjahjanto, but that picture has transitioned into graphic novel form.)

In the interest of disclosure, the parent Tweet in the quoted Twitter thread suggests that Evans is currently scoping out places to wreak some form of havoc or another. Take that as you will. If anything, it's proof that Evans can't sit still for too long before seeking things to blow up, but most importantly it means that he's working on something - just not The Raid 3.

Evans, in fairness, did say about a year ago that The Raid 3 wouldn't be on his radar immediately post-The Raid 2. That means an even greater waiting period for fans today. But if he needs that gulf between both films to make The Raid 3 the best display of bone-shattering carnage possible, so be it.

We'll keep you up to date on details regarding The Raid 3 as they become available.